August 30, 2004

Context is Everything, the Nature of Memory

I've been reading Susan Engel's Context is Everything, The Nature of Memory. She writes "Between the folds of one's mind and the expression in words or pictures of a memory lies a process of manifestation that is extremely complex but worth understanding. " Using current research on memory, vivid anecdotes and examples from autobiographies and memoirs, Engel does much to help us understand the complexity of memory.

My takeaways from her book

    • Remembering is a process of transforming an internal moment of re-experiencing into something one shares with other people."
    • The self as personal historian and the center of the past.
    • The memory of everyday life. “those little scenes, rather than the grand events, are what capture for teller and listener alike the specificity, uniqueness and significance of the person’s life. It is the experience of lives we want to know about more than the facts of the life. ”
    • We recall the past in a way that makes us seem and feel consistent.
    • Chronology is what distinguishes autobiography from memoir.
    • A strictly accurate and objectively verifiable account of what happened when doesn't necessarily say much to rememberer or listener. What is the meaning of what happened is what people want to know. We want our chronologies tagged with personality

"Paradoxically, as more and more of our lives are lived indirectly through these complex layers of representation and media, we become thirstier than ever for accounts of direct experience, experience that remains the central focus of our historical curiousity.

Posted by Jill Fallon at August 30, 2004 12:46 PM | Permalink
Comments

I am always amazed that some people, in relating something that happened, give only the facts of the event and not their response. Without the personal reaction, it is just a verbal snapshot.

Mary Lou Fowler currently has a story on her blog that point this out: http://mlcoe.typepad.com/full_fathom_five/2004/08/transformed.html

Posted by: Ronni at August 30, 2004 5:57 PM